[mb-style] [Clean up CSG] Correct punctuation (was: Typography)

[David K. Gasaway]

On 7 Feb 2008 at 0:44, Bogdan Butnaru wrote:

> It's civil up to here:

Come on, now.  This whole thread has been pretty civil. :)

> David K. Gasaway seems to argue against them, apparently on the reason
> that such characters are used inconsistently in practice. 

This is a slight misstatement (not that I'm faulting you for it).  The 
problem isn't that they rules are applied inconsistently (we can 
arbitrarily define our own unambiguous rules).  Rather, any rules we 
define won't necessarily be correct when viewed outside the narrow 
context of track listings on MusicBrainz.org or tags in audio files.

> In the general context of CSG, David mentions he's not convinced the
> masters list would solve all complexity issues, but he applauds the
> effort:

In all fairness, I believe Jeff was the first to express this sentiment 
in as many words.

> David Gasaway says that the
> correct rules will scare editors away from the master lists. 

I think there may be a misunderstanding here.  I did express a concern 
that overly detailed rules and steep learning curves will scare folks 
away from CSG/MusicBrainz, but not from the master lists.

> 5 - David claims en-dashes don't have any semantics, and here:

I meant that one dash symbol could be used without losing semantic 
meaning.  In other words, to use dash rather than an em-dash to 
represent an interval does not destroy the semantic meaning behind the 
interval.

> * David and Jeff seem to argue that the distinction between various
> dashes is a matter of typography rather than punctuation, and thus we
> should forbid the more uncommon ones.

While I have certainly made this argument, it is not actually my 
primary opposition to the dash variants.  I apologize if I've extended 
the debate too much in this direction - it just happened that way.

> * Alex and Lauri seem to argue that the "correct" (they don't seem to
> disagree on that) punctuation marks are hard-to-impossible to use, and
> are against requiring them. (It's not clear to me if they at least agree
> to "allow" or "encourage" their use.)

This is actually closer to how I feel on the issue.  I don't want to 
construct unnecessary barriers for editors or users.  I would prefer 
to, as Jeff so succinctly put it, "err on the side of inclusion".

P.S.  Thank you, Bodgan, for putting this summary together.

-- 
-:-:- David K. Gasaway
-:-:- Email: dave at gasaway.org
-:-:- Web: dave.gasaway.org
-:-:- MusicBrainz: dkg